Cavanagh sacrifices plausibility for plot surprises in his disappointing eighth thriller featuring New York City con man–turned–attorney Eddie Flynn (after The Accomplice). A prologue introduces 22-year-old maid Ruby Johnson, whose financial troubles have reduced her to working in the kinds of Upper West Side homes she once lived in. Ruby sees an opportunity for a new life after witnessing an unnamed man she recognizes gun down one of the residents on the street where she works. Ruby retrieves the gun the killer abandoned in a garbage can and uses it to frame Dr. John Jackson, one of her employers, for the crime, then takes credit for tracking him down. Jackson retains Flynn to fight the ensuing murder charge—a difficult proposition, considering Ruby managed to plant his fingerprints on the gun. Meanwhile, Flynn tries to dodge a hit put out on him by an unknown enemy, which draws out-of-town gunmen to New York once Flynn’s mob boss friend ensures that no one local accepts the contract. Cavanagh stretches both plots quite thin, with reveals that are equal parts outlandish and underwhelming. Here’s hoping the next installment is a return to form. Agent: John Wood, RCW. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

A 29-year-old SAT tutor turned murder suspect goes on the lam in Deitch’s stylish debut. When Evie Gordon reports to the Victor family’s mansion in L.A.’s Los Feliz neighborhood for a study session with 17-year-old Serena, she finds the door ajar. Nobody answers her shouts, so she proceeds to the garden, where she discovers the corpses of Serena’s parents. Evie then retreats to the foyer, where she hears a noise from under the stairs. Inside a compartment is a young woman bound with an electrical cord, whom Evie frees just as Serena arrives. Serena initially mistakes the duo for intruders, and in the resulting chaos, Evie knocks Serena unconscious, possibly killing her. Serena’s boyfriend then walks in, prompting the panicked pair to run, and a manhunt to start. Evie knows the truth likely resides with her fellow fugitive; unfortunately for her, however, the woman won’t speak. Deitch’s twisty tale takes the form of an after-the-fact tell-all by Evie, and her wry narration adds texture and fizz to the action without skimping on character development. Neo-noir fans will get a kick out of this. Agent: Stephanie Delman, Trellis Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Pandian delights with her fourth whodunit featuring disgraced Las Vegas magician Tempest Raj (after A Midnight Puzzle). When her performing career ended in ruin, Tempest returned to her small California hometown to join the family business: a secret staircase construction firm. The firm’s latest client, Harold Gray, hired the company to convert his home into a library focused on classic detective fiction just before he died. Now, Harold’s heir and grandnephew, Cameron, has taken control of the project. He asks for his own living quarters above the library and goes ahead with his late uncle’s plan to host an interactive murder mystery play, written by Tempest and her friend Ivy, to christen the new space. After one of the actors is killed while rehearsing a stunt with a toy gun, the bad situation turns truly bizarre. Not only had the victim somehow switched places at the last second with another actor, who’s now missing, but then the body disappears altogether. Drawing on her expertise as an illusionist, Tempest sets out to solve the impossible crime, despite knowing she’s up against a roomful of suspects who know their way around a murder mystery. Tempest remains an immensely likable heroine, and Pandian’s shrewd puzzle plot arrives at a satisfying and surprising conclusion. This will enchant fans of Golden Age mysteries. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Bassoff (Beneath Cruel Waters) delivers an unsettling if familiar thriller set in the too-idyllic town of Bethlam, Nev. After mail carrier Hank Davies accidentally discovers that three of the envelopes he’d been carrying that day contain blank pieces of paper, he shares the news with his wife, Iris, who panics and tells him to “mind his own business.” Then a strange woman appears at Hank’s window in the middle of the night and warns him to trust no one, including Iris. From there, the story’s aperture widens to include Walter Daley, another Bethlam mail carrier who discovers blank letters in his mailbag, and Catherine Gordon, a local woman who despairs that she can no longer distinguish between what’s real and what’s a figment of her imagination. Gradually, the three story lines converge, with each protagonist’s quest for the truth bringing them closer to the frightening reality of life in Bethlam. Bassoff whips up sufficient unease with his Twilight Zone setup, but not all the answers satisfy. Still, Blake Crouch fans will enjoy this mind-bender. Agent: Bekcy LeJeune, Bond Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Gómez-Jurado pulls out all the stops in the thrilling conclusion to his Antonia Scott trilogy (after Black Wolf). Scott’s exceptional intellect landed her a spot on the covert Red Queen Project, which pairs extraordinary operatives with members of European law enforcement who also act as their bodyguards. After Scott’s partner, Spanish Police Insp. Jon Gutiérrez, is abducted, her handler tells her that members of the Red Queen program have been killed across Europe. As Scott worries she might be the next to die, her nemesis, Mr. White, takes credit for kidnapping Gutiérrez and offers Scott a deal: if she solves three murders on a tight deadline, including one that ended in a wrongful conviction several years earlier, Gutiérrez will be returned to her unharmed. Gómez-Jurado successfully raises the stakes at every turn without tipping the narrative into absurdity, delivering a pulse-pounding adventure that also manages to tie up the previous novels’ loose ends. It’s a fitting finale. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Kazumi’s middling debut tracks the swift downfall of 30-something Londoner Claire Arundale. After a blissful year of dating, Claire’s boyfriend, Noah Coors, has proposed, and her dreams of having a home and family finally seem to be within reach. On impulse, Claire decides to surprise Noah at his office one afternoon, and is shocked to learn he’s no longer employed there. Soon, she discovers he’s also blocked her number. A frantic internet search reveals that Noah has a beautiful long-term girlfriend named Lilah, and the two of them share a massive home in a posh neighborhood. Devastated, Claire starts digging up all she can about Noah, desperate to know if she’s just one in a long line of women he’s deceived. Then Lilah is brutally murdered, and Claire becomes the police’s main person of interest. Despite sturdy prose and some gripping courtroom scenes, the narrative is marred by clichéd, predictable reveals. Kazumi’s decision to sprinkle in excerpts from Claire’s diary telegraphs a major twist while doing little to illuminate the character’s psychology. This fails to make much of an impression. Agent: Camilla Bolton, Darley Anderson Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Feeney (Good Bad Girl) stumbles with this hackneyed tale of a grieving mystery author who seeks solace on a remote Scottish island. A year after bestseller Grady Green’s wife, Abby, disappears, his life hits the skids—he hardly sleeps, he’s late on delivering his new novel, and his financial troubles force him to move into “the worst hotel in London.” Salvation comes via Grady’s agent, Kitty, who offers him the use of her deceased client’s cabin on the secluded Isle of Amberley. On the ferry over, Grady thinks he sees Abby; soon, his hallucinations worsen, and he grows wary of the frosty locals. With zero cell service, no car, and a variety of macabre surprises waiting in his cabin, it takes Grady a while to notice Amberley’s conspicuous absence of birds—and men. Feeney assembles her plot from familiar parts: elements of The Wicker Man, Gone Girl, and Shutter Island jostle for space among flat descriptions (“The house... is enormous, by far the biggest I’ve seen on the island. It should have been called the Big House on the Hill”) and flatter characters. Worse, her trademark twists are more far-fetched than ever. It’s a letdown. Agents: Kari Stuart, CAA, and Johnny Gellar, Curtis Brown U.K. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

The cruelty and absurdity of family bonds drive this riveting crime saga from Currie (The One-Eyed Man). Babs Dionne, the domineering French American matriarch of her Waterville, Maine, community, maintains a sprawling criminal empire through sheer force of will. After surviving a near-fatal overdose, Babs’s oldest daughter, Lori—a military veteran grappling with PTSD—is tasked with finding her missing sister, Sis. Meanwhile, tensions escalate after Babs discovers that her grandson Jason has a black eye inflicted by his alcoholic father, and some of her formerly loyal lieutenants begin to challenge her authority. Complicating matters, a drug kingpin uncovers an aberration in his supply chain and sends a malevolent enforcer known as “The Man” to New England to investigate. When Sis turns up dead, grief and guilt ignite Bab’s fury, setting in motion a bloody revenge campaign that spares no one in town. Filled with idiosyncratic characters, Currie’s stirring, cinematic tale blends mystery, suspense, and domestic drama to incisively interrogate the limits of filial responsibility. It’s a major achievement. Agent: Simon Lipskar, Writers House. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

Hays’s stellar sophomore novel (after The Cloisters) is a powerful, surprise-packed study of family, wealth, and consequences. In 1992, promising playwright Sarah Lingate—wife of the youngest heir to the Lingate oil fortune—drowned beneath the cliffs of the family’s property in Capri. Her daughter, Helen, was three years old at the time. Three decades after Sarah’s death, which was officially ruled an accident, the Lingates are preparing for their latest trip to Capri when Helen intercepts an anonymous package addressed to her uncle that contains a necklace Sarah was wearing the night she drowned. Before the family arrives in Capri, Helen and her friend, Lorna, who happens to be her uncle’s assistant, decide to seize on the opportunity and use the necklace to blackmail the family for 10 million euros, which would allow them to break free of the Lingates’ suffocating clutches. When Lorna disappears, however, it becomes clear that each member of the Lingate family has their own agenda—and that many of them are willing to go to extremes to keep the police from reinvestigating Sarah’s death. Hays uses the island setting to brilliantly exploit locked-room mystery tropes, and doles out jaw-dropping reveals at just the right moments. This masterful suspense story has all the momentum of a runaway train. Agent: Sarah Phair, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink

In Golden’s effervescent third whodunit featuring Evelyn Murphy (after The Socialite’s Guide to Death and Dating), the hotel heiress investigates the poisoning of a jeweler in 1958 New York City. Evelyn rarely leaves her suite at the Pinnacle Hotel, which her father owns. She’s sipping champagne at the Pinnacle’s restaurant one evening when her personal assistant arrives with a tiara from one of Evelyn’s admirers. The flash of diamonds attracts the attention of a woman nearby, who invites Evelyn to join her and her colleagues at Ladies Love to Sparkle, a costume jewelry company, for drinks. What begins as a promising social opportunity quickly turns deadly when Lois Mitchell, the head of the jewelry team, is poisoned moments after Evelyn meets her. Things go from bad to worse when a gentleman thief starts stealing luxury goods from the hotel’s wealthy clientele. To preserve the family brand, Evelyn once again dons her sleuthing cap, stumbling through comic encounters with hotel staffers and guests until she’s able to tie both mysteries in a bow. Golden’s characters are broad and the plot is familiar, but Evelyn—for all her self-importance—is an immensely likable heroine. This delivers a welcome dose of escapism. Agent: Madelyn Burt, Stonesong Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/17/2025 | Details & Permalink